Sunday, 17 November 2013

Jessie Hume...a hero if ever there was one.

I attended the protest in the Square at two PM on Saturday; I waited until
Monday to take a look at all the various blogs relating to the subject. Not
just about the protest itself but the compelling and powerful driving force
behind it.

On Monday I had my answer…and her name was Jessie Hume.

It sounds just an
ordinary name amongst the millions of names that exist here in New Zealand.
But the actual fact is…it isn’t.

It’s a name that we can now clearly associate with energy, drive, clear
goals and directions, honesty and transparency.

It’s a name we should not forget;
instead we should emulate the behaviour that grew from that name.

Here is her blog in full, not only does it touch the heart but it shows
the way forward for all of us, no matter our age…thank you Jessie.

Last week
will be one of the more memorable ones for me. I started a petition that gained
over 100,000 signatures in a week. Then I collaborated with a spontaneously
formed national collective to organise marches across the country.

Thousands
flooded onto streets to stand up against rape. For the first time mainstream
media sources managed to meaningfully expand upon the idea of rape culture and
introduce terms such as “victim blaming” to the collective consciousness. If
you’re still not sure what it means, “rape culture” refers to a culture that
unwittingly enables and normalises rape. Some say little can be done about it,
yet that’s not actually true. Ask Kim McGregor or Louise Nicholas, there are
plenty of ways. TOAH-NNEST carried out and delivered a detailed analysis of
issues to the government in ’09 and it was almost entirely ignored. Instead
more and more money was stripped from survivor support programmes across the
country, decreasing general responsiveness.

If you
want to know why we are in this position now, that’s at least one good reason
why.

People
have asked me many times if I was surprised at the response and the answer is
“not at all”. I think it reflects the unmet need of our communities. When one
in four women and one in eight men are affected by sexual violence in this
country – people of colour and transgender people most of all – to me that
isn’t just a small social problem, it’s a national health crisis.

As the
week progressed the endless barrage of public gaffes got worse; starting with
our own Prime Minister telling seeming serial gang rapists to “grow up”, to
police saying no one had come forward, then it turned out someone had come
forward, and then that turned into four ignored complaints, progressing with
victim blaming radio DJs and culminating with Wellington lawyer Keith Jefferies
telling a jury that “all she had to do was close her legs” regarding the rape
of a woman by now-convicted rapist George Jason Pule. All of this just a few
weeks after Central District Superintendent Russell Gibson made the comments in
a letter to a rapist’s wife that a 10 year old girl was a “willing party” in
her own rape.

Consequently
we have heard Police Commissioner Pete Marshall accept that mistakes were made,
but he didn’t reckon that reflected any generalised cultural malaise. Well
Pete, 100,000 New Zealanders disagree with you, and I’m one of them. Auckland Barrister
Catriona MacClennan put it best this week when she wrote the following:

“Here is a
list of actions the police could have taken in response to the Roast Busters’
activities:

1. Conduct
a full investigation, rather than simply monitoring the situation.

2. Contact
Facebook and arrange for the page to be removed so the girls did not continue
to be re-victimised in cyberspace for two years.

3. Act on
the complaint laid by the 13-year-old woman two years ago and lay charges.

4. Have
Police Youth Aid visit the boys to warn them about their behaviour and explain
the law.

5. Visit
the boys’ parents and speak to them.

6. Visit
the school and speak to the principal and have him or her speak to students to
explain the law and the proper way to treat young women.

7.
Publicise the Roast Busters’ activity two years ago to put a stop to it.

8. Meet
young women in the local area to warn them about what was happening and teach
them to keep themselves safe.

9. Meet
the parents of young women.

10. Obtain
search warrants and search the boys’ homes to check what evidence there is.

Members of
the public do not have the same level of detail as the police about the Roast
Busters situation.

• Section
160 Sale of
Liquor Act 1989; – purchasing or acquiring liquor with the intention of
supplying it to a person under 18.”

Now I’m no
lawyer but as I understand it rape cases are built using corroboration. When a
girl is told it’s just her word against theirs and that nothing can be done,
that’s not quite true. It is the job of the police to build such cases by
conducting a broad spread of interviews, and it can be about how she acted
immediately after, who she told, if their stories corroborate hers, and other
witness details about people’s movements at the time. It’s not just medical
examinations – as useful as they may be. This is a legal, legitimate way of
prosecuting such cases. Many of these issues have been identified in reviews of
police practices and it’s our job right now to ask why these have not been
implemented.

I have to
say it: police are people too, they are family members and they are people in
our community, and as individuals they have as much need as any of us to see
these changes made. So I want to ask police to speak up too. I want them to ask
“What can we do better?” and then listen and respond when replies are given. In
a country where only one in every ten rape complaints see it to court, if the
police do not get with the program here it seems like they are actively
enabling rape to proliferate. They become instead of a support service a barrier
that reduces rape reporting and allows attackers to keep attacking. This is a
time for contrition and contemplation, not defensiveness.

But I
don’t just want to get at the police here. As I mentioned before rape support
services have taken such severe cuts that we may remember Wellington Rape Crisis was forced to take PR
reparative guilt-money from Hell Pizza who encouraged people to commit sexual
assaults for purposes of humour.

Something
is seriously wrong here. And that thing is that we have allowed rape culture to
proliferate. Well, no more.

If you
haven’t already, sign the petition. If you haven’t already, write to your MP.
If you haven’t already, write to John Key.

Talk about
this issue, keep it current and let’s ensure they act upon what we have to say.
People are desperate for real changes. Next year is election year and it seems
remiss of any party to sit on their haunches and not make addressing rape
culture a key point of policy. And not just for strategy’s sake, but for
people’s sake and both for our sake and for their sake.

Some bug
bears:

Please use
the word “survivor”, not “victim”. It is preferred.

When you
say survivors have a responsibility to come forward (or pressure them to do so)
remember, that they should only be asked to do so when our services make it
easy for them – ideally, those services would be specialised services for
dealing with sexual violence. It is a heavy burden for any survivor to bear –
while they are trying to recover – that it now their charge to prevent
recidivism. I thought that was everyone else’s job. We need to find ways of
making the whole thing less re-traumatising for them.

Jessie Hume

Protest
Organizer

- See more
at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/11/18/guest-blog-what-now-after-rape-protests/#sthash.hGiZFc2G.dpuf